The present invention broadly relates to contact pressure rolls and, more specifically, pertains to a new and improved construction of a controlled deflection roll assembly for rolling facilities.
Generally speaking, the controlled deflection roll of the present invention comprises a rotatable roll cylinder or shell rotatable about a stationary roll support member or beam and supported by support or pressure elements disposed in axial rows on the stationary support member or beam.
Such type of controlled deflection rolls are known, for instance from U.S. Pat. No. 3,587,152, granted June 28, 1971. They are used, for instance, in rolling mills or devices for rolling metals, such as aluminum or steel, or for rolling plastic foils, paper or textile webs or sheets, or are employed in printing press installations. In these applications it is often necessary to individually and independently adjust and regulate the contact pressure of the individual support or pressure elements at various points of the pressure or pressing line or axis. In the teachings of the state-of-the-art the support elements are individually supplied with pressure fluid and the pressure to the individual support elements is independently adjustable and regulatable.
In heretofore known controlled deflection rolls the number of regulation points in the axial direction was limited and was governed by the number of support elements. Even in rolls having a plurality of parallel rows of support elements no improvement was taught or contemplated, since support elements were provided in groups of two or more at the same axial position. Even when roll devices were provided with controlled deflection rolls having a regulation sufficiently fine for processing wide sheets of material or wide webs, when processing narrow sheets of material or webs they were served by a correspondingly lesser number of regulation points, so that the regulation was not sufficiently accurate, i.e. roll devices of this type could not be readily converted for handling narrower sheets or webs of material.